Nop not in the slightest but as long as you keep to yourself no one is going to waste their time and money to go after you. In other words, Just don't do anything stupid and you'll be fine.
Not nearly that clear cut, there are lots of situations where it might be okay to physically have the unit anyway. Really quite complicated.
Oh? My understanding of it is since we are not licensed developers then we can't have them, further more at least in the case of MS the kits are leased not sold to the studios afaik.
I'd assume if they are old or previous generation, they'd be fine to have. No one at Sony is going to be threatened by a nerd with a PS2 TOOL.
I feel if its an asset that was demanded to be returned, IE: anything with "property of X" is a dodgy zone to be in, where as 360 devkits for instance don't have any of that. They were more or less SOLD to the developer, therefor the developer no longer has to obey their rules of how to own it. Xboxone kits though and shit like that are forcefully taken back by Microsoft if it isn't returned, but let's say the xboxone was 10 years old today, do you really think MS is gonna hunt down that kit? No.
Yeah I was always under the assumption that if its an older dev kit (360, PS3, and back) then the companies wouldn't necessarily care if you own it. Cause I doubt SEGA goes after people with Dreamcast Dev Boxes.
Here's the thing to remember; in example of Midway games for instance. When the company went into bankruptcy protection, they were forced by the courts to liquidate ALL assets including development hardware. As such, Microsoft for instance, had no recourse as they cannot come after the company for A: selling off an otherwise "contract protected" asset (i.e. An XDK) and B: cannot demand said items from the perspective buyer because they bought the item in a liquidation sale in good faith. So in this sitch you'd have an xdk, in possession other than Midway, with someone who has zero contractual obligations with Microsoft. It would be 100% legal in that same situation because whomever purchased it from the sale did so legally. So, if you bought an xdk from someone who bought an xdk from some dude who bought it from a sank development company, is that legal? That's why these things are better considered "gray" part of the legal system.
Basically, keep your head down and you'll be ok. I managed to get in some shit with them a few years ago but its because I made a stupid move really. But I mean nowadays its not possible (by standard means) to do what I did back then so you should be all good. Plus it was the year MS decided to go full lockdown on this sort of stuff when it was at its peak. Nowadays, they have their full attention on Xbox One.